What changed
China’s State Council submitted a report on November 3 to the National People’s Congress Standing Committee, putting the country’s state-owned land at 523.604 million hectares at the end of 2025. The inventory also recorded 174 identified mineral-resource types, 97.145 million hectares of state-owned forest, and 231.08 billion yuan in central ecological-protection and restoration funds during 2025.
Why it matters
This is a baseline for how China is managing land, minerals, forests and ecological spending as one national asset pool. The figures show the scale involved: state-owned arable land stood at 19.988 million hectares, construction land at 18.845 million hectares, and forest stock at 11.0 billion cubic metres.
The report also points to the pressure behind the accounting. Idle and inefficient construction land remain a problem, mineral resources are not being used efficiently enough, and water-use efficiency still trails international advanced levels. China’s next task is therefore less about simply counting what it owns than deciding how to use those assets more carefully as population patterns and new industries change.
The first identification of high-purity quartz as a new mineral type adds another detail to that shift: the inventory is still being refined even as the government tries to tighten control over existing resources. The report does not specify project-level allocations or deadlines for its priorities, so the practical test will be how national figures become local decisions.
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